So to continue on with the story of my beginning we have moved into the years of 5th-7th grade. I am calling these the lost years because I do not have very good recollection of these years...part one is because there will be other years that I do not have good recollection of either. As Petersburg began to "decline" my "concerned" father made the decision to move. This decision would have a greater impact that what could have been known at the time later on down the road. You see up until this time we were not poor...while not well of we could have been thought of as lower middle class. I don't recall ever being hungry or not having the stuff we wanted through these years. That was to come later. My dad put our house on Mulberry St in Petersburg up for sale and we moved to Colonial Heights. I do not recall the name of the street but I remember where it is located. It was a nice house in a nice neighborhood. I recall it having 4 bedrooms, a really nice screened in patio, a greenhouse(!), and a really nice front porch. The best part of the house was that I got my own room....even better was that my room used to be a car port so it set off from the rest of the house....I was away from everybody and I loved it! Funny how life goes. Anybody who knows me now knows how much I hate to be alone....hate, hate, hate it...but back then I loved it! Much like Ty I spent hours in my room alone...I would read or write or just daydream. I am not sure when I lost this ability or why. Maybe through this journey I will remember and possibly be able to recapture that quality about myself.
Like I said at the beginning I do not recall much about the three years we lived in Colonial Heights. I went to Tussing Elementary for 5th grade and then to Colonial Heights Jr High School (what middle school was called back in the day) for 6th and 7th. I remember this was the beginning of me feeling like an outsider. Back in those days families didn't move around like they do today. Kids started school and finished school with the same group of kids. So coming in at 5th grade was rough. Relationships have already been established. I do not remember making any friends during this time. I remember on the street we lived on there was 2 other houses with kids. I remember going over there to play but I can not recall any names. The house behind us had a boy named Alex who loved KISS and had a crush on Shannon.
Some free association thoughts of this time include:
We had a skateboard and roller skates and a lot of concrete....I don't remember being good at either one. Shannon was better but she still fell a LOT.
My mom was still watching kids. There were these 2 girls that I remember most...Misty and Alisha - sisters who did not look anything alike.
We went to this big Baptist church right around the corner. We were baptized there. Not sure why.
I had the Grease OST on vinyl and played it constantly
The significance of this time was that while we were living in the nice house in CH the house in Petersburg would not sell. So eventually we lost the house both the house in Petersburg and the nice house in CH - this would set up the future level of poverty to come....more on that in the next chapter!
No comments:
Post a Comment